Read Ebook: La Mort de la Terre roman suivi de contes by Rosny J H A N

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Ebook has 726 lines and 34947 words, and 15 pages

The captain was standing on the bridge, when he felt some one tugging at his coat, and he looked down.

There was Inez demanding his attention.

"Take me up, pop," said she.

"Bless your heart!" laughed the captain as he obeyed the little empress; "you would ruin the discipline of a man-of-war in a month."

While speaking, he perched her on his shoulder, as was a favorite custom with him.

The day had been unusually warm, and the night was so mild that the steady breeze made by the motion of the steamer was scarcely sufficient to keep one cool. Little Inez had thrown aside her hat with the setting of the sun, and now her wealth of golden hair streamed and fluttered in fleecy masses about her shoulders.

The steamer was plowing straight to the westward, cutting the waves so keenly that a thin parabola of water continually curved over in front of her from the knife-like prow.

Perched aloft on the shoulder of the captain, Inez naturally gazed ahead, and the figure was a striking one of innocence and infancy peering forward through the mists and clouds toward the unknown future. But Inez was too young to have any such poetical thoughts, and the captain was too practical to be troubled by "aesthetic meditations."

He chatted with her about their arrival in Japan, saying that she would be glad to see no more of him, when she replied:

"If you talk that way, I'll cry. You must go home and live with us. Uncle Con says papa has a big dog, and if we haven't room in the house, you can sleep with him, and I'll feed you each morning--oh, look!"

AN ACCIDENT

That which arrested the attention of the little girl in the arms of Captain Strathmore, was a sight--unique, rare and impressively beautiful.

All around the steamer stretched the vast Pacific, melting away into darkness, with here and there a star-like twinkle, showing where some ship was moving over the waste of waters. Overhead, the sky was clear, with a few stars faintly gleaming, while the round, full moon, for whose rising so many on the steamer had been watching, had just come up, its disk looking unusually large, as it always does when so close to the horizon.

Just when the moon was half above the ocean, and when the narrowing path of the illumination stretched from the ship to the outer edge of the world, a vessel under full sail slowly passed over the face of the moon.

The partial eclipse was so singular that it arrested the attention of Inez, who uttered the exclamation we have recorded. It was seen by nearly all the passengers, too, most of whom were looking toward the horizon for the rising of the orb, and expressions of delight were heard from every quarter, for such a sight, we say, is rare.

When the wonderful exhibition was over there were murmurs of admiration from the passengers, who, grouped here and there, or promenading back and forth, had stood spellbound, as may be said, while it was in progress.

Captain Strathmore and two of his officers had seen the same thing once or twice before, but they had been favored in this respect above others, and could hardly expect anything of the kind again.

The captain now prepared for an interesting and novel ceremony, which he had announced would take place that evening by moonlight.

Descending to the deck, and approaching the stern, where the expectant passengers had gathered together, the group were silent a minute, while he stood among them holding little Inez by the hand. A few minutes later the purser came aft, carrying a parcel in his hand, which he carefully placed upon the taffrail. Then he spoke in a sepulchral voice.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we all have lost minutes and hours, but it is seldom that we deliberately throw away a day. But we are to do so now. We are about to bury a day. To-day is the Twentieth, to-morrow will be the Twenty-second, and where, then, is the Twenty-first? There it lies" . "Life is short enough, without deliberately casting an entire day into the sea; but there is the consolation of knowing, on your return, that it shall be restored to you, and thus beautifully does nature preserve the equilibrium throughout the world. What more fitting than that the day should be buried by the hands of one whose life is as spotless as the snow upon the peaks of the Sierras we have left behind us?"

All now uncovered their heads--that is, the gentlemen did--and the captain advanced, leading Inez Hawthorne by the hand. Holding her up a short distance from the deck, she called out:

"Good-by, Twenty-first of September!"

She repeated the words correctly, for the captain whispered them in her ear, and as she spoke she gave the parcel a slight shove, and overboard it went, striking the water with a splash, and instantly sinking out of sight. The package was nothing but some old iron, wrapped about with coarse brown paper.

The ceremony of burying a day, as the reader knows, is a common, and it may be said, a necessary, one with vessels sailing westward over the Pacific, as the picking up of a day is necessary on the return. At first sight it seems incongruous, but it is in fact the only way in which the reckoning of time can be kept correctly.

The little ceremony naturally caused the matter itself to become one of discussion, and probably a goodly number of young ladies and gentlemen picked up more knowledge of the matter than they had ever dreamed of before.

Two curious things happened within a half hour of this novel ceremony.

In a few minutes it was ascertained that the steamer had broken the shaft of her propeller, thus rendering the all-important screw useless. This necessitated the hoisting of her sails, and a monotonous voyage to her destination, a return to San Francisco, or a long deviation to Honolulu for repairs.

While the necessary investigation was going on, a sail had been sighted bearing down upon them, and in half an hour it came-to, a short distance off, in the hope of being able to afford some assistance--as the sight of a steamer lying motionless on the water meant that something was amiss.

The skipper or captain of this trim little craft was Jack Bergen, of Boston, and he with his mate, Abram Storms, had made the trip across the continent by rail to San Francisco--thus saving the long, dangerous and expensive voyage around Cape Horn.

But of these, more hereafter.

Captain Bergen, after his craft came-to, was rowed across the short, intervening distance with his mate, and they were assisted upon deck, where they were received most courteously.

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" he asked after he and his brother officer were received by Captain Strathmore.

"I'm obliged to you, but I'm afraid not," was the courteous response. "You know, there's no way of telling when a piece of iron is going to fracture, and so there is no way of providing against such an accident."

"Is the shaft broke?"

"Yes; broken clean off."

"Where?"

The captain of the steamer smiled, for he saw no need of such a question, since he considered the damage irremediable.

"Quite a distance from the screw, and it's a curious fracture. Would you like to look at it?"

"I would, indeed. You see, we have got considerable out of our course--being too far west--and we shall make a pretty sharp turn to the south, toward Honolulu."

"I am debating whether to go there, turn back to San Francisco, or keep on under sail to Tokio."

"This is my mate, Abram Storms, from Enfield, Connecticut," said Captain Bergen, introducing the two. "I bring him along because he is the most ingenious man ever turned out by that home of ingenuity; and when I saw that something was the matter with you, I came alongside, more because I believed he could help you, than in the expectation that I could be of any service."

"Captain Bergen does me too much honor," protested the stoop-shouldered New Englander, who, had there been more of daylight, would have been seen to blush under the compliment.

"I have no doubt he speaks the truth," replied Captain Strathmore, leading the way below to where the broken shaft rested motionless; "but this trouble is too much like a broken neck for any surgery to help."

A minute later, a group of half a dozen stood about and stooped over the broken shaft, and examined it by the aid of lanterns, the chief engineer showing a more courteous spirit than is usual under such circumstances.

As one looked at the huge cylinder of solid iron, gleaming with a silvery whiteness all over the jagged face where it had been twisted off, the wonder was how it could be possible for any force to be tremendous enough to do such damage. The peculiarity about the breakage, however, was that, instead of snapping nearly squarely off, the fracture extended longitudinally for fully eighteen inches, so that the face of each part was a great deal broader and longer than is generally the case in such accidents.

The group surveyed it a minute or two in silence, stooping down and feeling of the innumerable jagged protuberances, the indentations, and the exceedingly rough surface, the minute particles gleaming in the lamp-light like a mass of silver ore split apart.

The first remark came from the New Englander, Abe Storms.

"That is curious, for there are no signs of crystallization, nor can I detect a flaw."

"Nevertheless, it must be there, for perfect iron would not have broken in that manner," said the chief engineer.

"I beg your pardon," said the mate, courteously, "but it frequently happens. There has been some peculiar combination of the movement of the steamer on the swell of the sea, with the position of the screw at that moment--a convergence of a hundred conditions--some almost infinitesimal, but necessary, and which convergence is not likely to take place in a million revolutions of the screw--that has brought an irresistible strain upon the shaft--one that would have wrenched it off, had the diameter been twice what it is."

The group looked wonderingly at the speaker, for every intelligent man felt that the theory of the New Englander had a stratum of truth beneath it. It was hard to make clear what the mate meant, but all to a certain extent understood, and no one ventured to gainsay it.

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